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Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Part 3 A Casual Conversation with Wayne Atherholt St. Pete's New Director of Cultural Affairs

Recently I had the opportunity to set down with Wayne
Atherholt, St. Pete's new Director of Cultural Affairs, to chat about the
current status of St. Petersburg as a home for artists and as an arts
destination.

We met in Wayne's office at City Hall.

My
Questions are in Bold:

"Is
there a place for direct artist subsidy from the City or do you feel there is a
better way to support artists?"

"I think the best thing we can
do is to find customers. That's what I have heard. Find customers for the
artists and galleries and bring them here.

There is sort of a progression of
the arts experience. Most people who come here if they are going to have an art
experience they are more than likely going to go to the Dali Museum or the Chihuly exhibit or
the Fine Arts Museum, that's sort the
leading cultural experience here in St. Pete.

If you can get them to go further
down to the Edge, or Grand Central they are going to have yet another experience
and there are great arts oriented businesses there such as ARTicles Gallery,
Pinot’s Palette, Grand Central Stained Glass, Craftsman House and Painting With
a Twist.

Getting them down to the Warehouse
Arts District, the Train Station (Morean Center for Clay) and some of those
places is a little bit more challenging right now. If you can get people to
have the entire urban experience, which really is a cultural and arts
experience here, I think they would be sold.

We’re continuing to work with this
district, as I mentioned, to improve lighting, signage and other things so that
people can walk from Duncan McClellan Glass to Zen Glass and Funktionhouse and

Soft Water Studios and be able to walk to Gallery 909 a bit further south in
the historic Deuces area.

These are people who may relocate
here.

Not everybody is going to buy art.
At some point somebody will buy say a coffee mug with some design on it a local
artist created. That's their first "art" purchase.

Many people will think that is not
an "art" purchase, but for many people they bought a mug that was
designed by an artist. It has the artist name on it, there is a little
biography card, they can follow them on Facebook if they want. Maybe they will
buy a poster or a print by that artist and hang it or frame it. Then maybe they
will buy an original piece of art.

Not everybody starts off buying a
$2,000 or $3,000 painting.

There are some wonderful collections
here in the City and throughout the state. They all got started with one
piece."

"Help
me understand the difference between and "arts destination" and an
"artist community".

"An arts destination is going
to have the infrastructure for cultural tourists. We started this back in the
90's with sidewalk cafes." Wayne continued.

"We have some of the other
ancillary things like a book store. We have the largest book store in Florida
with Haslams.

Those are the types of things along
with the Gas Plant Antique Emporium, some antique malls, restaurants, hotels,
you have the entire infrastructure here; and then you have got the arts
facilities themselves. You are now able to draw people to an arts destination.
You actually see the arts community within that destination.

So to sell the destination is to
also sell the artists community where people can see glass being blown, they
can see pottery being thrown and they can see artists painting.

They can come here and take a class
for 6 weeks if they want too, they can do a 2 day seminar, they can hear a
lecture, and they can go to see a number of museums.

It's sort of an a la cart menu that
a visitor can choose from.

So as you can see, there are a lot
of opportunities. They just need to be packaged up properly.

The Central Avenue Trolley pretty
much links up all of those specific experiences, and you are starting to see
branches off of that primarily on M.L. King Street and 22nd Street and of
course along the water front."

In
the next Post Wayne lays out some preliminary ideas and plans for arts events
and an Arts Festival.